Chapter 7
"You know," Jerry said one afternoon, "you ought to help publicize your movies." She frowned, not knowing at all what he was talking about. She didn't know that the art film type of movie that Jerry made was ever publicized, and she had no idea right off how she might figure into it. Jerry explained it to her. It was quite simple, the way Jerry had planned it. When Frontier Rape opened at a new theater, they would invite the press to a private screening, after which they would interview her, Cassie, the star. They would all write articles about her for their newspapers, and everyone would know she was a star. And you never knew, other producers might start offering her parts in bigger-budgeted movies.
Cassie was thrilled. The prospect of having the newspapers all say she was a star sent chills up her spine.
The afternoon of the screening, Heinie and Jerry acted as if they owned the theater where her picture was showing, telling everybody where to go and what to do. She thought that was because movie people were important people until she read in the newspaper the next morning that Heinie and Jerry owned the theater. So that's what Jerry did for a living, what his "business" was, she thought.
So many things had happened to her since that afternoon out on the sand dunes when they'd made the movie that the actual physical memory of the pain of being raped and tortured had passed from her mind. She saw herself up there on the screen and was amazed at her own image. The emotions that had made her body contort up there on the screen had passed from existence, but her body itself, larger than life and nakedly beautiful up on the screen, was still hers. She still possessed it, and the men in the audience stared at it in absorption. She knew they liked her.
After the movie, she and the press people were ushered into the storeroom where she answered questions. Jerry and Heinie primarily wanted the newsmen to see that Cassie indeed existed in the flesh.
Cassie seemed surprisingly calm and poised as she answered their questions. She wore a short knit dress that was almost see-through, her body was vibrant, and she was confident. She had been coached what to say. When a reporter asked her if she'd had any reservations about such a strenuous role, she replied that no sacrifice was too much for a true actress. When he pressed it and said, "Even the thorn?" she replied by telling him about Hyacinthe Lamour having a pin stuck into her.
When a reporter asked her why she made movies like this, she replied that she was simply being honest, that people fucked and she happened to be good at it.
Another reporter looked at the fact sheet they'd been handed about her. Noting she'd grown up in Oklahoma and always dreamed about being a movie star, he asked her how she happened to make her connection with Jerry and Heinie. She answered, "Well, actually I first met Jerry in Texas and he brought me here." Jerry flinched.
"What do you hope to accomplish-besides having a good time-in making this type of movie?" asked another reporter.
"What do you mean?"
"What does it mean to you?"
"I'm acting out my real life feelings about male sexuality," she said, after a moment's thought. It was a line Jerry told her to say if she got a chance, and she figured it fit in here.
As the reporters left, one of them, smiling, turned to her and said, "Uh-Cassie-if I may take the liberty to say so, you have an extremely photogenic cunt."
"Why, thank you!" she smiled, not knowing what "photogenic" meant, but knowing she was being paid a compliment.
She got mentions in three newspapers. There were three articles about her, each with her picture. They all said she was beautiful and had a nice body. One of them said that she "had an air of the ingenue" about her; she asked Jerry what that meant, and he said, "newcomer." Another said that she "evinced both a fear of and a relish for the act." Jerry explained that meant she acted real well. All of the articles mentioned that she was Jerry's wife, which is what had been written on the fact sheet.
She was billed at the theater as a superstar. She made Jerry drive her by the theater five times one Sunday just so she could look at the marquee.
A week and a half after the press conference, an article appeared in Newsivord magazine, and they had a sexy picture of her in her short knit dress, sitting with her legs crossed.
"OKIE MAKES GOOD," the article was entitled:
San Francisco's booming pornography industry has hailed its first superstar in the person (and body) of Cassie Smith, who admits to being an okie who came to California to make good, and is married to her mentor, Jerry Smith, who in partnership produces and exhibits her films. Exhibit her he does and magnificently, for with her expressive body, her apparently lustful proclivities, and her photogenic (and exceedingly well photographed) orgasms, she has a bona fide "talent" for pornography. Nothing inhibits this girl; she is a natural exhibitionist and will do anything before the camera. Jerry, who manages the theater, claims two thousand customers per day with many repeat viewers, which at five bucks a throw is a lot of money, a record for this kind of film, even in wide-open Bagdad-by-the-Bay.
But is she really someone who found her niche in life at a relatively early age, an okie who made good? One wonders, when one comes away from one of her movies, if this turned-on chick, who not only has orgasms most men only see in their dreams, but who also writhes utterly convincingly when tortured or beaten and sometimes has a sad childlike hesitance and look of wounded innocence, just might not be one of life's true victims?